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And other times it’s just a start. Get yourself seen. Then heard. Then assert yourself as part and parcel of the community that’s been blind to you forever. Surely, the tone-deaf comments and embarrassing situations will begin to be chipped away as you are seen and heard?

Maybe even the kidnappings and beatings? Once people realize you are everywhere all around them?

Sometimes, it’s enough just to be seen.

And other times it’s just a start. Get yourself seen. Then heard. Then assert yourself as part and parcel of the community that’s been blind to you forever. Surely, the tone-deaf comments and embarrassing situations will begin to be chipped away as you are seen and heard?

Maybe even the kidnappings and beatings? Once people realize you are everywhere all around them?

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I got a bird’s eye view in how visibility goes a long way in changing perception. I saw, not just crowds grow from one June to another at New York’s annual Gay Pride festivities, but how it seemed the entire region got in on it.

Decades before, brave queer folks—as they were dubbed then—had to angrily fight back to stop the violence directed at them, often chanting “We’re here. We’re Queer. Get used to it.” That anger helped open the door to today.

Pride celebrations commemorating the full spectrum of the human family—LGBTs and the friends and families who support them—are now de-riguer in global cities. And marriage equality is now legal in much of the Western world and Latin America.

Yet in many parts sub-Saharan Africa, we’ve got a ways to go. But we are making slow progress.

It’s been longer than a decade since I’ve attended the Big Apple’s Pride events, as I’m often in Ghana for the American summer.

Despite having the cradle of humanity on the African continent, we remain behind most of the world in embracing our LGBT families. Homophobia forces many LGBTs in Africa to flee and build up other societies where they are left alone and finally appreciated.

Many of our leaders gin up antigay sentiments for political gain, after all when electricity, pipe-borne water, and sound healthcare are tough to provide—one can simply demonize gays to distract.

It is routine. And sometimes borders on the absurd. As Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, the deputy speaker of the Ghanaian parliament did when he recently claimed homosexuality is worse than an atomic bomb.

Even though gays have been the fabric of society in Ghana for eons, political leaders and their religious counterparts would like you to think they were an anomaly or just pure evil.

Nonetheless, in the face of such onslaught, in many parts of Africa, the mentality of “retreat and be quiet” to save LGBT lives is finally becoming a thing of the past.

In South Africa, they may have laws protecting all—and legalizing same-sex marriage—citizens but still some want to silence anything perceived as gay. Earlier this year when the acclaimed South African film Inxeba (The Wound) was released, local censors fought to keep it out of movie theaters. The film tackles Xhosa manhood rites and is a tender love story that depicts wonderfully complex African men on screen.

It was controversial because it displays homosexual love in a heterosexual, hyper-masculine rural mountainside setting. I beamed with pride when this film—shortlisted for an Academy Award, and the first South African film to stream on Netflix—was allowed back in regular theaters, after the courts sided with the filmmakers’ legal challenge.

These brutal attacks have spawned new voices, homegrown operators demanding representation in culture and politics with zero tolerance for homophobia. They’re fighting back daily and staying visible; some have even formalized their struggle through the very public #HowIResist campaign, which chronicles their struggles for survival on social media.

We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.

In Kenya, gays are resisting government humiliation and marginalization by challenging their continued victimization in court even though the president, Uhuru Kenyatta, continues to claim to the world that their rights are a nonissue.

“I will not engage in a subject of ‘no’ … it is not of any major importance to the people and the Republic of Kenya. This is not an issue, as you would want to put it, of human rights, “ he told CNN’s Christianne Amanpour in April.

But his LGBT constituents are staying visible and not cowering. And, they are winning court challenges against humiliating injustices—most horrifically, Kenya’s anachronistic “anal exams.” Most of these activists are homegrown, but some like Nguru Karugu are folks who lived abroad and returned to do the work they were doing in America for the homeland.

He’s now a director with Public Health Innovations, and engaged with marginalized communities. “The Kenyan LGBT movement has continued to exert itself … groups have gone to court to challenge these laws on their own determination to secure their rights.”

And when the Kenyan Film Board, bans Rafiki (Friend) a Kenyan love story between two women from playing in movie theaters because they say it has a “clear intent to promote lesbianism” it is sad. But then the film goes on to become the first Kenyan film invited to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

I’m beaming with pride, knowing that Kenyans and Africans all over will ultimately see this film, regardless of censorship.

We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.

In Kenya, gays are resisting government humiliation and marginalization by challenging their continued victimization in court even though the president, Uhuru Kenyatta, continues to claim to the world that their rights are a nonissue.

“I will not engage in a subject of ‘no’ … it is not of any major importance to the people and the Republic of Kenya. This is not an issue, as you would want to put it, of human rights, “ he told CNN’s Christianne Amanpour in April.

But his LGBT constituents are staying visible and not cowering. And, they are winning court challenges against humiliating injustices—most horrifically, Kenya’s anachronistic “anal exams.” Most of these activists are homegrown, but some like Nguru Karugu are folks who lived abroad and returned to do the work they were doing in America for the homeland.

He’s now a director with Public Health Innovations, and engaged with marginalized communities. “The Kenyan LGBT movement has continued to exert itself … groups have gone to court to challenge these laws on their own determination to secure their rights.”

And when the Kenyan Film Board, bans Rafiki (Friend) a Kenyan love story between two women from playing in movie theaters because they say it has a “clear intent to promote lesbianism” it is sad. But then the film goes on to become the first Kenyan film invited to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

I’m beaming with pride, knowing that Kenyans and Africans all over will ultimately see this film, regardless of censorship.

We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.

In Kenya, gays are resisting government humiliation and marginalization by challenging their continued victimization in court even though the president, Uhuru Kenyatta, continues to claim to the world that their rights are a nonissue.

“I will not engage in a subject of ‘no’ … it is not of any major importance to the people and the Republic of Kenya. This is not an issue, as you would want to put it, of human rights, “ he told CNN’s Christianne Amanpour in April.

But his LGBT constituents are staying visible and not cowering. And, they are winning court challenges against humiliating injustices—most horrifically, Kenya’s anachronistic “anal exams.” Most of these activists are homegrown, but some like Nguru Karugu are folks who lived abroad and returned to do the work they were doing in America for the homeland.

He’s now a director with Public Health Innovations, and engaged with marginalized communities. “The Kenyan LGBT movement has continued to exert itself … groups have gone to court to challenge these laws on their own determination to secure their rights.”

And when the Kenyan Film Board, bans Rafiki (Friend) a Kenyan love story between two women from playing in movie theaters because they say it has a “clear intent to promote lesbianism” it is sad. But then the film goes on to become the first Kenyan film invited to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

I’m beaming with pride, knowing that Kenyans and Africans all over will ultimately see this film, regardless of censorship.

In Uganda, home of the botched “Kill the Gays” bill, pride commemorations—albeit small ones—are already happening; though each year like clockwork, the government clamps down on LGBT cultural events (or really any cultural event they deem has a gay component). But year in year out, the events keep happening and more and people take their first public baby steps.

In Tanzania, the brutal onslaught by the government continues as they bully prominent activist—even as it impacts their own society’s health needs, particularly around HIV/AIDS.

Over in the tiny southern nation of eSwatini (Swaziland), where the absolute monarch has been known to deride gays, the LGBT citizens are beginning to come out of hiding and are planning a Pride commemoration to coincide with New York.

Will we, in Sub-Saharan Africa, have our pride moment? I’d say despite all it all, we are already having it. Marches may come and go, but we keep moving forward. And I beam with pride at every small step.

At an international conference on Black portraiture, imagery and depiction in Johannesburg, South Africa last November, I gave a presentation about the state of LGBT rights across the African continent. I told participants that I’d just come from New York, where, at the UN, the African bloc had spearheaded an effort to torpedo the work of the first-ever independent expert investigating violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

They wanted to halt the work of Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand, a human rights expert who had completed a tour of duty in Syria, and was appointed to the post of Special Raconteur in September. He had already begun his work, but the group objected to his mandate, which was to investigate abuses directed against LGBTI people. With so much state-sanctioned abuse on the continent this wasn’t exactly a big surprise. However, the African nation bloc said it wanted a delay because “there is no international agreement on the definition of the concept of ‘sexual orientation and gender identity.’”

This assertion was so off the mark that the American ambassador at the time, Samantha Power, described it as patently false. She would later assert that violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity are “well established,” and have been referred to repeatedly in UN statements and resolutions, including in the General Assembly and Security Council. “In reality, this amendment has little to do with questions around the definition of sexual orientation and gender identity,” she said. “Instead, this amendment is rooted in a real disagreement over whether people of a certain sexual orientation and gender identity are, in fact, entitled to equal rights.”

During my presentation, I posed the same question to the scholars and participants in the room that Botswana, on behalf of the African group of nations, had posed to the UN General Assembly: “Should sexual orientation and gender identity be included in broader issues of human rights concerns?” Then I gave them the unsatisfying response that Botswana’s ambassador, Charles Thembani Ntwaagae, gave to the UN: “Those two notions are not, and should not be, linked to existing international human rights instruments.”

I told the audience that while the African bloc’s response was totally unsurprising, what stung was South Africa not raising an objection. I said that being in South Africa, with its great constitution that outlaws discrimination, was bittersweet at the moment because they had not done anything to halt this, but instead had gone along with their reactionary neighbors.

A month later, at a second hearing, and in a second attempt to quash the appointment, the African bloc, with their supporters in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, saw their efforts dashed for good as more nations rallied round to vote in favor of it, particularly countries from South America. The defeat was a clear sign that, while divisions remain, the world is coming to the view that discrimination has no place in the 21st century.

And this time South Africa broke ranks with the African bloc and made its position very clear to the world. Jerry Matjila, the South African ambassador said, “We will fight discrimination, everywhere, every time. We cannot discriminate against people because of their own lifestyle or intention. That we cannot do in South Africa.”

The the first three books Cassava is publishing in the US. ((Cassava/Quartz))

By FRANKIE EDOZIEN
For eons, piracy in African book publishing has been something that booksellers lived with and factored in as part of the climate of doing business. But when Nigeria’s Joint Admissions & Matriculation Board, the body that sets the examination for students who seek to gain admission into universities selected the 2009 novel ‘In Dependence’ as required reading, the publisher declined.

Cassava Republic Press turned down what should be a goldmine because the publishing director was fed up with pirates cashing in leaving little for authors and publishers. But after some cajoling, came up with a compromise.

“Since the students have to pay for their registration, we said why don’t they pay for our book too. Let’s add it to the registration fee and they collect the book,” Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Cassava’s founder recounted. The book by Sarah Ladipo Manyika, already a strong seller, has since sold an additional 1.5 million original copies in the last two months.
In Nigeria, a country with millions of potential book buyers, publishing is a tough business. Many readers will happily pay for religious texts or textbooks but sometimes balk at paying for contemporary fiction or creative nonfiction. Yet local publishers like Parrésia, Ouida books, Farafina, and Cassava keep feeding Nigerians with high quality literary works, even with the ever looming piracy threat and unfavorable business environment.

Back in 2007 Cassava published the acclaimed writer, Teju Cole’s first book Every Day Is For The Thief unleashing his talent worldwide, and more recently nurtured Elnathan John’s Born on A Tuesday. The award-winning novel, Seasons of Crimson Blossoms by Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, has also just been published worldwide by Cassava.

Bakare-Yusuf, 47, has always seen herself as a problem solver, and the coup with the examination board has paid off. “They’ve ordered 200,000 more so 1.7 million students have access to the book. When they have selected books like that in the past, publishers will sell 200,000 copies of that particular book when there are 1.8 million students who must read that book. Pirates go on to sell it,” Bakare-Yusuf, told Quartz.

Cassava Republic is now tackling the dearth of African writing among mainstream American readers by opening shop Stateside after successfully expanding to Europe last year. While British and American publishers have opened satellite operations in Africa for decades it is less common for an African publisher to launch in the West.

Four Cassava books will be available in bookstores across the US this spring in a distribution deal the Nigerian publisher brokered with partners. At the recent Pen World Voices literary festival in New York, Cassava writers, Manyika and Ibrahim joined authors the world over in showcasing new work.

Bakare-Yusuf: “The means of production must be owned by Africans.” (Edozien/Quartz)

The US and Britain are center of the Anglophone publishing world and even though she began Cassava Republic in 2003 in Nigeria’s capital Abuja, she knew right from the start that the new company would one day have to launch internationally. Bakare-Yusuf said she needed time to build up a viable African business. And then go global only after it became a publishing force to be reckoned with. So the New York expansion couldn’t happen until 2017, a year after London’s.

“[London and New York] give symbolic legitimization to African writing whether we like it or not and we are acutely aware if that. But we are always saying even if they are the centers for legitimization, the means of production must be owned by Africans.”

For the novelist Emmanuel Iduma, and a founder of the acclaimed Nigerian literary magazine, Saraba, Cassava was ideal for his follow up book to ‘The Sounds of Things to Come.’ His new work, ‘A Stranger’s Pose’ is part memoir, and part travelogue and even part flash fiction. It would be a hard sell to a traditional publisher, but Cassava instantly got it.

“I sensed that their recent model of distributing outside Nigeria, in the UK and US, would liberate writers like myself from the worry of selling books to publishers who weren’t interested in developing, at least in the immediate, a support structure for African literature,” Iduma said.

The art critic added that he then understood fully “they were not only interested in books that could do well in the market today, but books that contributed, in the long run, to an archive of storytelling and criticism by African writers.”

Manyika, who first published with Cassava a decade ago, turned to them for her new work ‘Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun’ about a senior citizen in San Francisco exploring her sexuality. It’s a novel that has at its center an African immigrant. So the American strategy is simply, make the books available to African-American women, the Africans in diaspora many of who are in the middle class, and then the rest of America will follow.

“They want to see to see themselves reflected in what they are reading. They want to see different worlds and that gives them a sense of cultural confidence. Toni Morrison, Chimamanda Adichie, these authors were built by African-Americans and other black people and it’s after the fact (other) Americans picked them up,” Bakare-Yusuf added.

She believes that people of color constitute 85% of the world’s population and from a business perspective it is making Cassava sit up “and recast our gaze. From a business perspective Africa is the future.”

As Cassava Republic builds its market share in the US, plans are in the works to expand to Paris with a focus on selling translated works on her current writers.

While Nigeria’s 2015 presidential elections have largely been acknowledged as a victory for democracy — with the first ever victory of an opposition candidate –it was also a model in how social media brings transparency to the electoral process.

President-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressive Congress party lead in the vote last month quickly became apparent a few hours after polling units closed thanks to technologically savvy Nigerian voters using social media to share each step of the process.

Locally developed voter monitoring applications, Revoda and Nigeria Elections were in robust use during the entire weekend. Long before the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) shared any official polling numbers, Nigerians who had volunteered among the 700,000 electoral officers shared the voter numbers from their units. While nearly every tweet and Facebook post came with the ‘unofficial’ caveat it was a good indicator of the trend. By Sunday evening Nigerian social media had turned into a land of ‘Nate Silvers’,

In some senses it’s not a complete surprise that social media was accurately reflecting a trend. Nigeria has one of the fastest growing Internet penetration rates. Last year alone it added 10 million new internet users to have around 75 million Internet users now. Nigerians who voted last month were about 30 million.

People displace by Islamist militants display their voters card.

Ever since the #OccupyNigeria nationwide anger strike in 2011, when the Jonathan administration suddenly removed fuel subsidies and set off inflation, social media has played role in the national discourse.

Its national prominence rose a year ago when the over 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped in Chibok by the ultra violent separatists group, Boko Haram. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign reverberated around the world and even found its way to the White House. Before the vote, through Facebook posts, Twitter usage, and even sharing video through the messaging the application ‘WhatsApp,’ it often seemed that the campaign of President Goodluck Jonathan was playing catch-up in the lead up to the vote.
Flat-footed Jonathan

A senior person inside the Jonathan camp, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Quartz the president’s re-election campaign had been caught flat-footed on social media. “The APC campaign was consistent with their message on social media, they completely shaped the narrative there,” said the Abuja-based source. “By the time people here started to throw money at the social problem it was already too late.Then there was multiple messaging which was confusing for voters.”

And it was the same in this #NigeriaDecides campaign influencing both leading parties respective campaigns. As Techcabal noted, every trick in the book was in play even online polls with surprising results. On Election Day, everyone with a social media account played a role in disseminating results. #NigeriaDecides was the top trending hashtag on Facebook and Twitter on March 3oth as Nigeria and the rest of the world eagerly anticipated the results.

“Many people who stationed themselves at the polling centers until the close of election were able to know the results of those centers, record events and also photographed copies of results pasted,” Tony Okeregbe, a professor at the University of Lagos told Quartz.

“Then, they connected, via social media, with friends at other centers who did the same thing with other friends. At the end of the day, a rough estimate of what the results would look like was known before hand.”

The consensus from all sides is that while social media didn’t decide the vote it had a significant influence on perception, expectations and a demand for transparency. All in all it seemed that social media was a winner with the #NigeriaDecides hashtag resulting in citizens proclaiming that Democracy is alive and well in Africa’s most populous nation.

Some people are happy because APC won. Some are happy because Buhari won. But most of us are happy because democracy works. #NigeriaDecides

On the surface, Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, seems to be an opposition stronghold for those seeking to oust President Goodluck Jonathan from office in two weeks.

After all, state governors here for the last 16 years have been members of the All Progressive Congress (APC), the political party that has fielded former dictator Muhammadu Buhari for president.

The party leader and power broker, Bola Tinubu, was the governor of Lagos between 1999 and 2007 and is often referred to as the political godfather of his successor, Babatunde Fashola, who is himself coming to the end of his second term.

Across this African mega-city of 20 million residents, there seem to be more APC flags flying, but Jonathan and his People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are by no means ceding Lagos to Buhari and co—even though APC’s predecessor party, ACN, won Lagos with 81% of the vote.

The president visits often from the federal capital, Abuja, and sometimes that includes campaigning with Lagos-based voting blocs. It’s easy to know when he’s in town: Air and road traffic jams snarl up the city, even worse than the legendary daily Lagos traffic gridlocks. It’s also easy to understand why he’s been here so often. Lagos state is the most populated state and will likely be decisive in who wins the presidency.

As the Washington Post put it:

Not only does Lagos state have more people than many African countries, its gross domestic product (estimated at $91 billion by the current administration) dwarfs even Kenya’s ($55 billion)

While Lagos is dominated by Yorubas from the southwest, it is a melting pot of people from all over the country. Buhari is a Muslim Hausa/Fulani man from the north of the country. Many here have told me that APC could win the state in parliamentary and governorship elections but Jonathan could carry Lagos for the presidency as he did the last time he ran.
“My man Goodluck”

“I will vote for my man Goodluck,” Lawrence Oshiobe, 45, a chauffeur, told me. Buhari, he says, is out of the question. “I don’t want the Hausa man to go in. I look at him as Boko Haram, so let me cast my vote against Boko Haram.”

It’s not an easy process to vote. First you have to register. Then you go back to collect the permanent voter cards (PVCs) so you can vote on March 28 and April 14. Lines to pick up the PVCs in Lagos have been long and Oshiobe waited on his weekends off to ensure he could cast a vote.

Others told me that APC’s media savvy and social-media presence could make one assume they had this locked up. But many young people are apathetic here. Enough to eat away at Buhari’s support considerably.

For instance, Sadik Anifowoshe, 27, a clerk/delivery man, immediately mentions APC as his party; he says his uncle is a politician and predicts victory. But then he admits he’s not voting in two weeks.

He didn’t even bother to register.

“No I didn’t. I don’t like to vote. I’m not interested,” he said. “If I had time I would have [but] and I’m not interested. I don’t like it.”

Kate Okporuanefe, 28, also isn’t voting, but not because she isn’t interested.

“There was one time I went to register the queue was much, so long so I couldn’t wait. I tried somewhere else if I could register but there was a queue also,” the receptionist said.

She works all week and her time on the weekends is precious. “The only time I could register, I’m at church or doing one thing or the other.”
No fresh faces

Raymond Bernand, 33, didn’t register because none of the candidates appeal to him, so he’s consciously and proudly sitting it out.

“I’m tired of seeing the same old faces wanting to rule the people. We should elect new people. I think we should do something different, something fresh,” the office manager said.

These sentiments, plus the fact close to 2 million Lagos residents—40% of eligible voters, who queued to register have not yet gone to queue again to pick up the voter cards—emboldens Jonathan’s PDP supporters that Lagos is in play for the presidency and possibly the governorship. Some of them went on an unruly rampage on the streets this week.

Even though PDP party officials said they had no role in what those supporters did, APC bigwigs warned this was a harbinger of violence in less than two weeks. They have threatened to go to the International Criminal Court.

Bernard said APC would have gotten him to go register if they had recruited a new candidate not tainted by a history in politics. Plus he believes in one term per candidate, so Jonathan wasn’t going to get his vote anyway.

For all the whispers of ‘change’ from the ‘everyman’ in Abuja who would like to see Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan, sent packing on election day on March 28, there are loads more vociferous supporters who want him reelected.

Miles away from the arid sun-scorched Abuja federal capital territory, here on the banks of the River Niger and the entry way to the delta riverine area it would be wrong to say Jonathan’s opponent, the former military dictator, Muhammadu Buhari has no support.

But it feels negligible. Barely detectable.

Few here believe Buhari, and his party, All Progressive Congress (APC), are actually agents of change. Here, and across the other five states that make up the so-called South-South, geopolitical zone, Jonathan is ‘The One’ even though he is much-maligned in other parts of the country.

“There’s no two ways about it. The man has performed creditably well and they love him,” said Obi Kingsley Adimkpaya, 35, a native of Asaba and a lifelong resident of the Delta.

“If you ask a common man on the street, he will tell you the household name is Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.”

And that holds for much of the myriad of smaller ethnic communities in the entire area.

Many point to Jonathan’s quelling of the youth restiveness among the Niger Delta militants who for years blew up oil pipelines and kidnaped foreign workers.

Adimkpaya added: “He engaged them to services, they started training them and they are gainfully employed. We are experiencing maximum peace in Delta. We don’t have the crime and kidnapping like it used to be in those days.”

Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) is firmly entrenched here.

It is impossible to understand the dynamic patterns of Nigerian voters without looking closely at their ethnic and geopolitical leanings.

Even if they feel Jonathan has public policy failures, south-easterners and mid-westerners in Nigeria will vote for Jonathan because of the perception that northern politicians, in particular those of Hausa-Fulani origins have had more than their fair share of occupancy of the Aso Rock Presidential Villa. Since independence in 1960 nine of Nigeria’s 14 heads of state have been from the northern part of the country.

Sticking with your own

Most people here feel a ‘south-south’ candidate should have an opportunity for two terms as president. And many believe that northerners have tried for years to sabotage and undermine Jonathan from the get-go.

It has angered and galvanized some, who say said they weren’t inclined to participate, are voting for Jonathan now.

“Number 1 is geopolitical fairness,” said Jude Mordi, 46, a shrimp distributor. “There seems to be this whole thing about power belonging to the north, that’s basically why I decided to vote in the first instance.

He added: If Nigeria is one country I don’t see why someone should be bamboozled out of the presidency because of where his from. It would be a real contest, had APC picked anyone from the south-south.”

That is the thinking among many and the system Nigeria operates under, Mordi told me asking then why he shouldn’t vote for his kinsman.

Even when folks whisper, it’s about how terrible Buhari would be.

One retired civil servant, a septuagenarian, remembers Buhari’s 20-month reign from 1984 to 1985 for shutting down progressive projects such as Lagos’s plans to build a metro rail line that might have eased the commercial capital’s endemic traffic problems. She also praised Jonathan for finally funding a second Niger Bridge, the sole road gateway to the South-East from Asaba after decades of outcry to replace the 1960s bridge which has fallen into bad disrepair.

Others point to what they see as Jonathan’s strong handling of Boko Haram in the early days which led to northern politicians coming down on him hard with some accusing him of genocide.

Phantom Boko Haram

“They called Boko Haram a phantom. And afterwards Buhari said it was the first time he sees a president declare war on his own people. We have selective amnesia,” Mordi said.

This is, of course, in stark contrast with the narrative in the north of the country where Boko Haram has killed nearly 20,000 people and displaced over 1 million from their homes. The president has often been accused of being weak and ineffectual in dealing with the terrorist insurgency – though recent Nigerian military successes are finally changing that narrative.

But in this part of the country, Jonathan’s heartland, they blame northern politicians for allowing the insurgency to fester in a bid to destabilize the president.

The bigger issue, one high-ranked military officer told me in Abuja last week, was that very large parts of the north remain underserved with primary and secondary schools for basic education, leading to the kind of environment that allows anti-Western education movements like Boko Haram to fester.

With all the northerners that have been in power, why is this the norm? he asked. “Can you imagine this in the South?

So now we know where Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan is getting his new found swagger.

In recent months, the extremists who have wrecked havoc on the country’s northeast—killing thousands and displacing about one million people – finally seem to have been pushed back.

The regional force made up of soldiers from Chad, Niger and Cameroon as well as Nigeria’s own military have all claimed to have scored victories against the dreaded Boko Haram.

Chad’s president Idriss Derby has said he knows where the group’s fearsome leader Abubakar Shekau is hiding (perhaps in the vast Sambissa forest) and he’ll exterminate him.

Jonathan himself has said he’ll have this insurgency under control before the elections at the end of the month.

Wow.

After five years of bloodshed and Boko Haram pledging allegiance to their equally blood thirsty cousins in extremism, Islamic State, why is Mr. President suddenly so confident?

Well it turns out he’s gotten himself Russian, Ukrainian and… wait for it, South African mercenaries. Mercenaries for hire, or rather technical security advisors as Mr. President would have the world believe.

On Wednesday Jonathan told Chris Stein, reporting for the Voice of America that these companies were simply providing “technical support” for newly acquired weaponry and other military equipment.

“So we now have these technical people who are trainers and technicians, who are to train our people on how to use them, and technicians that help the maintenance, at the same time training our people how to maintain this equipment,” Jonathan said from the presidential villa here, near the gargantuan Aso Rock.

But up in north east Nigeria’s biggest city, Maiduguri, there are hundreds of foreign soldiers from South Africa and Eastern Europe who are engaged in the fighting. Mercenaries.

It was these kinds of foreign mercenaries, white soldiers who attempted for years to crush the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. They bombed and killed many black South Africans for decades.

These soldiers are the ones who know how to operate the rocket propelled launchers and the South Africans like to work on their own not alongside the Nigerian soldiers.

Then there is the strange scenario of foreign ‘soldiers’ in night goggles flying fighter jets with Nigerian military equipment to attack the Boko Haram from the air. One foreign contractor has already lost his life, but gains are being made it seems

Jonathan must feel he’s got to try something different after all Boko Haram razes entire villages, straps bombs on children and kills with abandon.

Jonathan believes they have trained with Islamic State though he wouldn’t say which country this training took place.

“So we know the links are there. … we may not know the degree of linkages as to how much funds are coming in from them, the kind of volume of weapons coming in from them, the nationalities coming from them,” the president said. “But the training, because some of the Boko Haram members go to have their training in the ISIS camp and come back.”

But even if this new round of foreign military contractors succeed in killing many Boko Haram members, how will this play in two weeks when Jonathan is up for reelection against a surging Muhammadu Buhari?

In the shadow of the Aso Rock presidential villa, I chatted with a few blue collar workers. The ones who make this beautiful city work.

Unlike the chaotic nature of traffic in many Nigerian cities, Abuja is still fairly orderly, highways still have bright street lights and roads tarred immaculately.

On the surface it seems Goodluck is the man, but still a chunk of people here lowered their voices to me and whispered conspiratorially ‘We want change.’

Joseph, a launderer and sometime gardener, is a 41-year old Christian from the Jos area in the middle-belt of the country. He supported Jonathan for years. But now, back home in his village, people sleep in the bush at night, too afraid to sleep in their homes in case they are attacked by Boko Haram insurgents.

“There is no security. Our people dey sleep for bush. People are dying, he said mixing in Nigerian pidgin English.

He told me he was disappointed because working class folk supported Jonathan and put him in office last time but now all the poor are with Buhari.

Parking lot attendants, roadside traders all whispered some version of the same sentiment. This was hardly surprising after all people with little economic heft would of course hunger for a better life.

But then civil servants and friends in the private sector here also whisper the same thing, with one telling me that the galling thing about Jonathan and his cadre of ministers was that corruption was rampant and had become the norm. In the last year there has been an on going debate about whether as much as $20 billion really went missing from the treasury.

Could security and corruption issues, derail Jonathan’s bid to remain office? Despite the slick TV ads from Jonathan’s campaign urging voters to keep him in office ‘for the love of the country’ pollsters say it’s still too close to call.

The dour and conservative Buhari, in many people’s minds, would tackle Boko Haram and publicly punish the thieving.

As a child, I remembered the former dictator’s ‘War Against Indiscipline’ and his drive to root out corruption over 30 years ago, civil liberties be damned. But in a country with 60% of the population under-30 memories of his controversial reign are dim.

Yet support for Jonathan remains strong in the mid-western and south eastern parts of the country where he hails from. As I head out to that region, I wonder if the public vociferous support for him will be the same in private.

Goodluck Jonathan (left) and Jacob Zuma at the World Economic Forum.(Reuters/Pascal Lauener)

Cape Town, South Africa—The ruling political party, the African National Congress (ANC), turned 103 years old and held a big bash at the Cape Town stadium over the weekend.

The party of the late Nelson Mandela pulled out all the stops, bands, minstrel troupes, deejays, to commemorate the event and entertain hordes of party loyalists who poured into this city by trains, planes and buses in the days leading up to it. The entire affair reminded me of the World Cup celebrations in 2010, with all that dancing on the streets.

President Jacob Zuma is the de facto head of the ANC and chose Cape Town for this massive celebration, because in a sense it could be considered enemy territory. He wanted to send a message: The municipal government is in the hands of a minority party, the Democratic Alliance, and Zuma has an eye on reclaiming this Western Cape province for the ANC in 2016. So he brought his party here to tout his successes and respond to his critics. Before the bash he spent a few days in an old-fashioned door-to-door campaign, facing the voters here head-on.

This is the main difference between him and the president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan. Both men run Africa’s largest economies. Both men are controversial. But one man doesn’t hide from his foes.

For years, South Africa was this continent’s largest economy until it was overtaken recently by Nigeria. Goodluck Jonathan is up for re-election next month—but he would never be so bold as to enter a part of Nigeria where some folks don’t want to see him, the way Zuma did this weekend.

Indeed, those parts are growing. It appears Jonathan has ceded complete control of the northeastern Nigeria, to Boko Haram, the ultra violent extremist insurgents that want to destroy his government and establish a strict Islamic caliphate.

While the world wasn’t paying attention, Boko Haram now rivals Islamic State for deadly carnage on innocent citizens. Over the last few days:

Yesterday, bombs reportedly rocked Potiskum, bringing down buildings.

The day previous, Boko Haram strapped a girl, probably 10 or 11 years old with a bomb and sent her into a crowded market in Maiduguri, an ancient city. The blast killed 19 and injured many more. The new tactic of using little girls is particularly heinous and ungodly.

And it came just after many were reeling from what was supposedly the deadliest attack yet by Boko Haram, last week in Baga where scores, hundreds possibly up to 2,000 were slaughtered.

Baga is on the Lake Chad and many reportedly drowned swimming to an uninhabited island for safety. Those who reached the mosquito-infested destination were trapped without food and clean water. Many headed for buses that took them to Maiduguri—also the site of a Boko Haram bombing.

Is anyplace safe in Northeast Nigeria?

Bama, Baga, Damaturu, Chibok, Ngala, Dikwa, Banki, Gulak may not be familiar towns to the outside world but they represent places where this terrorist group has wreaked havoc, burnt down entire villages, and defeated the Nigerian soldiers.

And in the process displaced 1.5 million people.

But Nigeria boasts Africa’s largest economy. Where is Jonathan?

The world knows about the attack and kidnapping of 219 schoolgirls in Chibok and the resulting #BringBackOurGirls campaign, but Jonathan’s government hasn’t succeeded in bringing them home or remotely taming Boko Haram. It took the Pakistani teenage activist Malala Yousafza’s urging Jonathan to even meet with the relatives of the abducted girls.

Last week Jonathan was quick to condemn the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, but remained mum on Baga. This weekend, his dancing at his foster daughter’s wedding made the rounds on social media. He spoke about Nigeria’s “big challenge” but doesn’t appear to have named Boko Haram specifically.

Meanwhile, Jonathan continues to campaign for votes across the country, just not in the northeast.

Wouldn’t it be great for Nigerians there to see their president? Or for him to show solidarity with those people? Some believe those in the northeast won’t get to vote with bombs going off daily.

Last month, US presidential candidate and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Jonathan and his government had squandered Nigeria’s oil wealth. “Nigeria has made bad choices, not hard choices,” Clinton said. “They have squandered their oil wealth; they have allowed corruption to fester, and now they are losing control of parts of their (own) territory because they would not make hard choices.”

Jonathan seems to care only about squelching the campaign of his opponent, a former military dictator, Muhammadu Buhari, who despite his brutal past, many see as a viable alternative to the current state of affairs.

Before the election next month, maybe he ought to go and explain himself to residents of northeastern Nigeria. Just like Zuma did to voters in the Western Cape. I won’t hold my breath.

No criminal charges were brought yesterday against the New York City police officer who tussled with a black man and the latter ended up dead.

I wasn’t even mildly surprised.

By now, I know better. I moved to New York 25 years ago and spent most of that time as a reporter covering the city. I have investigated stories on corruption and the misuse of funds that have resulted in some serious consequences for people, including getting fired.

The death of Eric Garner—placed in a chokehold by an officer in a fight over loose cigarettes— was caught on video, though. I saw it and knew nothing would happen. Perhaps I am jaded.

Journalists hold up the mirror to our societies. We don’t have to like what is looking back at us.

New Yorkers have reacted with demonstrations. More than 30 people were arrested yesterday. More protests are expected today. Thousands are tweeting and Facebooking their fury.

America is having another racial moment. I’ve covered these before. And yet I’m still left wondering why, in 2014, black men scare the bejesus out of white police officers.

I suspect most Africans of my generation aren’t conscious of race until we have this awkward dance with her after we’ve settled in the first world.

Growing up in Nigeria, I was an Asaba man first. My ethnic identity was a source of pride. While I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, I wasn’t Yoruba.

And Lagos might have been home, but Asaba was and is where I come from.

For me, and those of my ilk, our whole identity is wrapped up in our ethnic identity. You are a Yoruba, Ibo, Hausa or Fulani first, then Nigerian.

But once you set foot in America, you are Black.

It’s a shock to the system but then you get with the program, assimilate or remain fiercely African.

Or Nigerian. Not just the catch-all “black.”

I was just beginning my career around the time of the vicious Rodney King beatings at the hands of white police officers, also videotaped, and the riots that followed in 1991. I can still remember the shooting death of an unarmed African son, Amadou Diallo in 1999 in the Bronx. Forty-one shots fired, and none of the shooters, all Caucasian, got any jail time.

Even after Diallo, in 2000, Patrick Dorismond, a dad of two, brushed off an uncover officer who inquired about drugs, was shot killed outside a bar in midtown Manhattan.

That officer got off with no criminal charges.

It was 50 shots that were fired at Sean Bell in 2006 on what was to be his wedding day. At least the shooters lost their jobs.

I didn’t grow up with the indignities that my African-American brothers endure daily—but they came eventually.

I’ve learned to put white fear in its own box when coded language like “angry” is used to describe hard working black professionals.

It really stings, but it no longer surprises.

It’s not just an American issue. Years ago, I walked past a blonde guy in a bar in Amsterdam. Instinctively, he reached back to grab me and held me—making sure his wallet was still in his pocket before letting go. This was in supposedly enlightened Europe.

It stung, but didn’t surprise.

Just last week, a young Liberian woman had to school much older white people in Britain that the entire African continent isn’t infested with Ebola. That she had to ask them to check their white savior complex in 2014 was shocking to me.

I spoke on a panel about newsroom diversity right after Ferguson erupted. I told the large group of New York University students to embrace all the things that made them different, whether it was ethnic diversity or ginger hair.

One student asked me what needed to be done to make changes in our world.

I responded that I thought it the responsibility of the powerful, the majority, white folks in general, to embrace and demand fairness for those who are not like them.

And it doesn’t have to involve money. Or maybe, it does have to in these cases.

New York City has paid millions in taxpayer dollars to settle civil cases of the families of minority men that police have killed. We all deserve better than what we are getting. Black lives matter and should be everyone’s concern.

Perhaps it was too good to be true. And indeed many thought, prayed, and hoped it wouldn’t be.
When the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan announced last week that the government had reached an agreement with the militant Islamist group, Boko Haram, to free the 219 kidnapped schoolgirls, their parents rejoiced.
“We were jubilating. We had every reason to be happy,” Lawan Abana, a parent of the one of the missing girls, told Reuters. This “agreement” even called for a ceasefire. What a feather this would have been in Goodluck’s cap. Right on on the heels of his country beating back the Ebola outbreak.
But in Nigeria, past is always prologue. Jonathan’s government has said in the past that it killed Abubakar Shekau, the group’s leader, only for him to pop up in new videos, taunting the government. So when more gruesome attacks on five towns took place one day later, it just seemed like the government was toying with the parents and the world, who have waited for six months for tangible results of a release.
Jonathan, it seems, cannot tame Boko Haram. The Islamist separatist terror group has wreaked havoc on the Nigerian government with its bombing and kidnapping campaigns. It is probably now the biggest threat to Africa’s largest economy.
Boko Haram has killed thousands in its attempt to create an Islamic state in a country with millions of Christians and others who practice African traditional religions. The militant group is so well armed that Nigerian soldiers have been accused of refusing to fight them, with a large group being charged with mutiny just before the “ceasefire agreement.”
Yet Jonathan never projects a sense of urgency where these girls are concerned, rarely acknowledging the worldwide #bringbackourgirls campaign. After all, it took him three months and the urging of activist Malala Yousafzai to even meet with the parents. Would this have been his response if those children were of his ilk? Children of his friends? Or his coterie of ministers?
Since Jonathan never made it to Chibok, where the abduction happened, it’s not hard to surmise he’s ceded the territory to Boko Haram. A release now would have been perfect, making him a winner, projecting the strength and resolve he can’t seem to muster—particularly after six months in captivity, and just before he’s expected to formally announce he’ll seek another term at Aso Rock, the Nigerian seat of government in February 2015 when the elections are scheduled. It would be his moment to shine bright in the eyes of the world.
Others who seek the presidency can lay the failures of resolving the Boko Haram crisis firm at his feet. He has, after all, failed to protect the citizenry in northeast Nigeria and the girls remain captive. But right after Saturday’s attacks, doubt began to set in. The alleged negotiator for Boko Haram was dubbed an imposter. And by the one person who could know.
Ahmed Salkida, a journalist who once shared a cell with Boko Haram’s founder Mohammed Yusuf and has been close to the group, set the Twitter world afire when he pooh-poohed the agreement in a series of tweets over the weekend.
Salkida now lives in Dubai, but he’s rarely been discredited on Boko Haram information.
Jonathan can still pull off an October surprise though. Without fanfare or announcements, he can and should do whatever it takes to recover those abducted—then return the boys and the girls to their families—and then blow his own trumpet.